LE MEILLEUR DU ROCK PROGRESSIF JAPONAIS

The French Musea Records has compiled Japanese prog bands (mainly from the nineties, but some tracks originate from the eighties) into this single-disc CD of 72 minutes. At least in Finland it's very limited to get any Japanese prog, and so I'm grateful of this chance to check out as many as 13 bands. Naturally - without informative liner notes - one don't learn much of them with just one track. But you can always study further via Internet!

I had some idea (prejudices) about Jap prog: often it's very keyboard-oriented, maybe bombastic as ELP, and/or leaning towards Metal, and a female vocalist is not as rare as in Western prog. For my pleasure this CD doesn't at least have an emphasis on heavier side of things. Yes, keyboards rule very much, but not much ELP clones around here. And there are several tracks featuring a female voice. Also plenty of instrumentals which is very good. Especially towards the end the CD is full of melodic and delicate prog with excellent sound.

Some very fine bands include WAPPA GAPPA, SIDE STEPS, MAGDALENA, BELLAPHON, MUGEN, DEJA-VU and PAGEANT. I'm not yet familiar enough with the CD to speak of separate tracks in detail, but all in all I enjoy this more than I expected. A pity there were no band infos. The source albums and release years are mentioned however.